Saturday, 21 June 2008

We Rock Amazon Canada

Comments

Mike, I was glad to do my part. Fred's book was a must-have. I studied photography at Vancouver's Langara College in the early '70's. Fred Herzog paid our class a visit once. In those days, few were thinking about an art career in photography, and, of course, Fred made his living as a medical photographer. So, the value of what he was doing with Kodachromes wasn't all that obvious. It is wonderful to see that in the following decades, Fred succeeded as an artist.

I'd been meaning to pick up a copy of Herzog's book ever since seeing his show at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Absolutely amazing stuff. Your post reminded me I'd better get on it.

I wonder, too, if folks who've never used anything but digital fully appreciate your mention that Herzog made all these photos using Kodachrome. Just in case anybody missed what that means, the highest ISO he ever used would have been ISO 64. A lot of the shots - especially the oldest of them - were more likely to have been ISO 25. Kind of puts the current craze for high ISO into perspective, doesn't it?

I just ordered it too; it was in stock when I placed the order last night, but foolishly I waited until today to see if I could buy the Sharkwater DVD locally for less. (I did.)

Something that Aaron was too polite to say is that right now book #2 on the Amazon.ca list is "A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61) ". David Hobby move over - Mike, you're the new Oprah of photography books.

I ordered one last night as well. A few months ago I read an article in the Globe and Mail about Herzog's Vancouver photographs. I meant to track down a copy of the book, but I forgot. Thanks for the reminder!

I also saw the show at the VanArt gallery, and was amazed at the color rendition, dynamic range and level of detail from these old Kodachromes brought to life again through modern, high-quality inkjet printing. From what I read, Herzog exhibited his photos only as slide shows, as he was not happy with the print technology at the time. As a somewhat frustrated scanner (using an Epson V700) of thousands of my own Kodachromes, I would LOVE to know what type of scanner was used for the exhibit.

In any case, Herzog seems to be little known outside of this area, which is really a shame, as I find his work a lot more compelling than many other more famous early colorists and urban street photographers.

The one example here ("Crossing Main") was all I needed to see; I order two copies, one for me and one for a fellow Vancouver lover friend.

Re: Scanners. Scanners (at least affordable scanners) are the single most disappointing technology of the digital era to date. Getting acceptable results is far more an art than a science and that really makes no sense. The variability between different examples of the same make and model scanner is incredibly frustrating. Manufacturers (particularly Nikon, which really has no excuse for the general lousiness of its scanners) are missing a bet by not fixing this.

"Scanners (at least affordable scanners) are the single most disappointing technology of the digital era to date."

Paul,
Amen, amen, and AMEN. I have to scan my illustrations for magazine articles, so I need a flatbed scanner. Despite light use, I am now on my FOURTH one since 2002. The first was an ultra-cheap freebie; the second a garden-variety mid-price COMP-USA model; the third a high-quality unit from HP, which after 18 months or so began putting a faint but discernible hard line of density variation in every scan, and later began banding. Finally, I decided that I needed to invest in a high-quality scanner, if for no other reason than to enable me to stop buying new scanners every 18 months. So I splurged for an Epson V700.

At barely more than a year old, the @#$!ing thing stopped working. One week it was fine, and the next time I tried it, it's making wonky noises and can't manage a simple scan. What happened in between? Absolutely nothing. It's been sitting untouched on my desk in exactly the same position it's always been. No drops, no knocks, no weights placed on it, no extremes of temperature; it just spontaneously stopped working. Barely out of warranty.

Consumer scanners drive me CRAZY. They are awful products, and a blight on the industry.

Having spent a fortune on crap scanners, I now get all my 35mm negatives scanned at Costco; if you work with the staff you can get better (and much more consistent) results than a Nikon 5000ED. For a flatbed I use a Lexmark All-in-One I bought on clearance from BestBuy for less than $60 (with WiFi!); it works FAR better than any dedicated flatbed I've had over the past 10 years.

I just found this book listed on Amazon.com but I think it's only available used, and for $159! I know the value of the dollar is down, but the price from Amazon.ca is CN$39, so it's not just the exchange rate!

They also list what they call the "Canadian Edition", but it's out of stock and they don't know when it'll be back?